Famous (10 page)

“How do you do it?” he asked.

“I told you,” I said. “I just stood there and waited, hoping she'd show up.”

“No, what I meant was, how do you know when to take the picture? How do you know whether it's a good picture or not?”

“I don't always know,” I said. “That's why I shoot rapid-fire.”

“I remember when we first met, before you were shooting celebrities, you would take a long time to set up just one photo.”

Was it my imagination, or did I detect something subtly critical in his words? Was he implying that the photos I used to take were more artistic and therefore somehow better? “I'm not doing that kind of photography these days.”

He nodded, took a sip of water, then dabbed his lips with a cloth napkin. We'd finished dinner.

“Does it bother you that I don't take the kind of photos I used to take?” I asked a little bit later while he rinsed the dishes in the kitchen and loaded them into the dishwasher.

“No,” he said. “But must it be one or the other? Can't you do a little of both?”

“I guess I could, but that's not what I want to do right now.”

Nasim dried his hands with a dishtowel. “Want to watch the movie?”

“Okay.” I'd brought over
Persepolis,
the animated movie about a rebellious girl growing up in Iran. I still
couldn't shake the feeling that Nasim disapproved of the pictures I was taking. But I didn't want to spoil the mood and decided to drop it.

We went into the living room and sat on the couch. Nasim's arm was over my shoulder and I nestled my head against his neck. I thought he'd pick up the remote and start the movie, but instead he brushed some hair away from my face, leaned over, and kissed me. “I'm proud of what you do.”

“You sure?” I asked uncertainly.

“Yes.”

“Well then, thank you,” I said, and kissed him back.

It started to look like we might not get around to watching the movie. I tried to forget our discussion about my photography and lose myself in the moment, but I didn't succeed completely. Then the alarm on my cell phone chimed. I gradually eased out of Nasim's embrace and turned it off. “I can't believe it's time already,” I mumbled, straightening my clothes.

“Sorry?” Nasim's brow furrowed.

“Shelby's party.”

His dark eyebrows dipped. I could tell that he'd forgotten about the party and had other ideas about how to spend the next few hours. “Are you sure?” he asked.

I didn't want to disappoint him, but I just had to go to that party. “You know how much this means to me.” I gave him a kiss on the cheek and stood up. Nasim still
hadn't moved from the couch, so I grabbed his hand and gave him a tug. “Come on, we'll have fun.”

I knew Nasim wasn't happy about going to the party, and on the way over I tried to explain to him that it wasn't like I was choosing the party over him. It was just a matter of timing. He said he understood, but once again I got that feeling that deep down he wasn't allowing me to see his true feelings. It was frustrating, but I'd learned from experience that there was nothing I could do about it.

It turned out that the party wasn't as much fun as I'd hoped. Shelby's little get-together turned out to be a catered affair for 120 people in a rented loft in Soho. Most of the kids weren't from Herrin, and Shelby was so busy introducing me to everyone as “the one from the
New York Weekly
article,” that we never actually got a chance to speak.

Each time she mentioned the article, I had to bite my lip to keep myself from telling her about the
People
cover, but I was terrified that would jinx the whole thing. Nasim, who'd been a little grumpy ever since we'd left his place, tagged along for a while but finally wandered away after he'd heard me answer the same questions for the tenth time. At one point I saw him talking to Shelby and felt jealous that he was getting more face time with her than I was.

My mother and Nasim were the only ones who knew about the
People
cover, and I made them swear not to tell a soul. I didn't even tell Avy or my father. I was convinced that the more people who knew, the greater the chance that the whole thing would be jinxed—that an even bigger story would break and the editors at
People
would pick a different cover photo, or that Naomi would get a restraining order to stop the magazine from publishing my shot.

After all, it really was too good to be true, wasn't it? First the Tatiana Frazee shots, then the
New York Weekly
story, and now the
People
cover? That was
way
too much good fortune. Something
had
to go wrong, didn't it?

But nothing did. Five days later
People
hit the newsstands with my photo of the pregnant Naomi Fine. By third period, copies of the magazine were flying around school, along with the whispers and the stares.

“This is ab-so-lutely amazing!” Avy gushed at lunch, a copy of
People
lying on the table before us. “Now you're going to be even more famous!”

I wondered if he was right, and what exactly “more famous” would mean. But maybe it wouldn't happen. “Not really,” I said. “Unless you know where to look and have a magnifying glass, most people aren't going to notice my photo credit.”

“But you got paid a ton, right?” Avy said.

I nodded.

“And it is good for your reputation,” added the ever
insightful Nasim with a tinge of irony in his voice.

“True, all that,” I said, and glanced toward the table where Shelby Winston was sitting with her friends. Shelby gazed back at me with a smile and lifted a copy of the magazine. She pointed at the cover, made an OMG! face, and winked.

My star was definitely on the rise.

NEW YORK PRESS
Baby Pap Scoops the Pros Again!

Jamie Gordon, the “baby paparazzo” has done it again! The fifteen-year-old prodigy photographer, featured three weeks ago in a New York Weekly magazine profile, has nailed the cover of People with a shot confirming that actress Naomi Fine is pregnant. Photo editors and fellow photographers are agog.

“First the Tatiana Frazee child-abuse shots,” quipped one editor. “Now the Naomi Fine baby bump. It's amazing. Either this kid is the luckiest thing ever, or she really knows what she's doing.”

“It would be a remarkable accomplishment for any paparazzo,” agreed another. “But for a kid that age, it's mind-boggling.”

Some of Jamie's fellow photographers are understandably jealous. “I'm not impressed,” said one. “Some people are saying that the first time might have been luck, but the second means she's for real. But lots of people get lucky twice. They even hit the Lottery twice. Let's see how long it takes for her to scoop everyone again.”

The newspaper article featured a side-by-side display of the
People
cover and a photo of me taken by that paparazzo, Lynn, outside Naomi Fine's building the day Marco the hairdresser freaked out. And, just as Avy had predicted, that was only the beginning. The story was picked up by national TV and dozens of other news outlets. Suddenly I knew what “more famous” meant. I was interviewed and photographed, TV news teams followed me from school to my stakeouts with other photogs. At one stakeout outside a restaurant, Seth Rogen made a joke out of coming up to me and asking for
my
autograph!

Dad and I flew to LA for the
Tonight Show
. Even though I barely slept on the red-eye coming home, I went straight to Herrin from the airport the next morning, running on adrenaline and doing my best not to miss more school and tick my mother off. And, of course, looking forward to basking in everyone's admiration.

After all, there I was on TV, the Web, the supermarket news racks. For the moment I was not just the most well-known high school student in New York.

I was, quite possibly, one of the best-known high school students in the country.

If not the world.

After school I trudged home, pulling my roller suitcase stuffed with outfits I'd brought for the
Tonight Show
. I was toast, completely exhausted after catching at most
only two or three hours of sleep on the plane the night before. I left the suitcase in the front hall and went into the kitchen. Mom was sitting at the kitchen table, staring down at a mug of tea cupped in her hands, looking haggard and pale. I knew at once that something was wrong.

“What happened?” I asked.

She looked up at me with red-rimmed eyes. “Alex had a seizure. Elena was taking him for a walk. Luckily they weren't far from St. Vincent's.”

“Is he okay?” I asked.

“Yes, thank God. It wasn't a bad one. We just got home half an hour ago. He's in his room, resting. But it was terrible. I was so scared when I got that call. I had to cancel all my afternoon appointments and rush down there. My patients know about Alex, and they say they understand when I have to cancel at the last minute. But not everyone reschedules. Each time something like this happens, I lose patients. . . . Sometimes”—her voice cracked—“I just don't know if I can handle it.”

She placed a hand over her eyes and began to weep. Her shoulders trembled, and she looked old and drawn. She wasn't just crying because she was tired and scared; she was crying because it was so unfair.

“Can't Dad help?” I asked. “Couldn't Alex stay with him more?”

“It's not practical.” Mom pulled the
tears from the corners of her eyes with her fingertips. “Alex needs so much medical equipment. The insurance company won't pay for duplicates just because we're divorced. And anyway, I'm always worried something will happen when he's at your father's place.”

“Even though you know what you know?” I asked.

Mom raised her head, wiped her reddened eyes with the back of her hand, and scowled at me. The tic around her left eye came back. It took her a moment to understand what I'd meant. Nearly everyone with muscular dystrophy dies by the time they reach twenty-five. “Don't say that. Medicine is constantly making advances.”

That was, of course, true. But it had been more than a hundred years since muscular dystrophy was first identified, and people diagnosed with it today still didn't live much longer with it than they did a century ago.

Mom was quiet for a moment, and I knew she was listening for any sounds coming from Alex's room. Then she stood up, kissed the top of my head, and left the kitchen as if she were on autopilot. She would check on Alex, take care of whatever business still demanded her attention from earlier in the day, try to figure out what to do about dinner, let Elena go home, take care of Alex for the rest of the evening, and then collapse into bed, only to start the whole process over again tomorrow.

It would have been totally selfish to feel upset that she'd completely blanked on the fact that just seven hours
ago I'd landed at JFK on my way back from a TV taping in LA. Way too much had happened with Alex during that time, and she had way too much on her mind.

And yet, I couldn't help feeling bad.

I WOULDN'T BE SITTING ON THIS DUMB TROLLEY RIGHT
now, shivering in the AC with wads of drug money taped around my stomach, if it weren't for my parents. Instead I'd probably still be in New York, just where they want me to be. But they were so stupid. This is what you get when you can't compromise.

I had a huge opportunity with
Rich and Poor,
and Mom and Dad just arbitrarily snuffed it. Can you blame me if I totally hate them? They kept saying, “We're doing this for your own good. Someday you'll understand.” Well, the only thing I understand is that the only people they care about is themselves. It wasn't like I wanted to
join some weird religious cult. I kept telling them that acting is what I'll want to do for the rest of my life. And they were, like, “Oh, you're too young to know what you really want,” and “How is acting on a reality TV show going to help you get into a good college?”